Defense Minister Gen Nakatani on Saturday met with Okinawa Gov. Takeshi Onaga over a controversial plan to relocate U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma within Okinawa Prefecture.
Their meeting, at the prefectural government offices in Naha, was the first since Onaga was elected governor last November with a pledge to block the plan to build a replacement facility in a coastal area of Nago for the Futenma base, which is located in the densely occupied city of Ginowan.
Nakatani and Onaga were expected to exchange views on the central government's plan to deploy Ground Self-Defense Force units on the islands of Ishigaki and Miyako, also in Okinawa Prefecture.
At the meeting, Nakatani was likely to reiterate the government's position that the planned relocation from Ginowan to Nago is needed to alleviate the risk of accidents posed by the existing base and at the same time maintain the deterrence effect of U.S. forces stationed in Okinawa.
Nakatani was expected to explain to Onaga that Tokyo and Washington reaffirmed the need to ease Okinawa's base-hosting burdens at their "two-plus-two" security talks in New York last month between the two nations' foreign and defense ministers.
Onaga voiced "strong resentment" after Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and U.S. President Barack Obama confirmed the need for the Futenma relocation facility at their summit in Washington held the day after the two-plus-two meeting.
Following talks with Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga in Okinawa in early April and before Abe's visit to the U.S., Onaga met with the prime minister in Tokyo, but the two sides have remained apart on the relocation issue.